Early history and root causes

Typical dwellings of the Shoshone Indians during the late 19th
century

Cache Valley, originally called Seuhubeogoi
(Shoshoni for Willow Valley), was the traditional hunting
grounds for the Northwestern Shoshone, particularly as a gathering
place for grain and grass seeds, as well as hunting both small game
like woodchuck and ground squirrel; large game animals
including deer, elk, and
buffalo; as well as trout
from the rivers. This mountain valley had also attracted the
attention of fur traders and trappers, where trappers and explorers
like Jim Bridger and Jedediah Smith made visits to the region. The
name Cache Valley derives its name from the fact that
these fur trappers left stores of their furs and goods (i.e., a
cache of furs) in this valley as a central staging area
for hunting trips in the surrounding mountain ranges.

So impressed were the trappers by the region that they recommended
to Brigham Young that he consider the
valley as a location for the original settlement of Mormon pioneers. Instead, Brigham Young
chose Salt Lake Valley, even though
Mormon settlers would eventually move to Cache Valley. As early as
July 31, 1847, a Shoshone delegation of about 20 met with the
Mormons to discuss land claims over northern Utah.

Immigrant pressures causing Shoshone starvation

The
establishment of the California and
Oregon trails, as well as the
establishment of Salt Lake
City in 1847 brought the Shoshone people into regular
contact with American emigrants moving westward.By 1856,
the first permanent settlements and farms in Cache Valley were
established, starting at Wellsville and gradually moving northward.

A significant policy established by Brigham Young at the time
recommended that the Mormon settlers establish friendly
relationships with the surrounding American Indian tribes,
particularly with a policy to "feed them rather than fight them".
Even with this policy, however, significant food resources were
being consumed and areas taken by settlers pushing the Shoshone
increasingly into areas of marginal food production. In addition,
foraging and hunting by pioneers traveling on the western migration
trails took additional resources away from the Shoshone. As early
as 1859 this was recognized by Jacob
Forney, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Territory
of Utah, who wrote "The Indians...have become impoverished by the
introduction of a white population". He further recommended that an
Indian Reservation be established
in Cache Valley to protect essential resources for the Shoshone.
This recommendation was ignored by the U.S. Dept. of Interior and
his superiors. The Shoshone, desperate and starving, found
attacking nearby farms and cattle ranches not just a matter of
revenge but a matter of survival.

In the early spring of 1862, Utah Territorial Superintendent of
Indian Affairs, James Duane Doty,
spent four days in Cache Valley and reported: "The Indians have
been in great numbers, in a starving and destitute condition. No
provisions having been made for them, either as to clothing or
provisions by my predecessors...The Indians condition was such-with
the prospect that they would rob mail stations to sustain life."
Doty purchased supplies of food and slowly it doled out. He
suggested furnishing them with stock to enable them to become
herdsmen instead of beggars.

For a
final precipitant to events in Cache Valley, gold was discovered by
John White on Grasshopper
Creek in the mountains of southwestern Montana on July 28,
1862, just north of Cache Valley. This led to the
establishment of a migration and supply trail right through the
middle of Cache Valley between this mining camp and Salt Lake City,
the nearest significant source of goods and food in the area.

Outbreak of the U.S. Civil War

When the U.S. Civil War
occurred in 1861, Abraham Lincoln
was concerned that California, by then a state, would be cut off from the rest of
the United States. He specifically ordered, with
congressional authorization, several regiments to be raised from
the population of California that were to help protect the mail
routes and communications lines of the Western USA. In addition,
neither Lincoln nor the U.S. War Department trusted the Mormons to
remain loyal to the Union, in spite of telegrams and assurances by
Brigham Young that the Utah Territory
was still loyal to the Federal Government. The actions of the
Utah War and the Mountain Meadows massacre were
still fresh in the minds of military planners, not to mention a
fairly substantial militia made up of Mormon settlers that
seemingly answered only to Brigham Young himself and not the
Federal Government.

Warnings and conflicts with Cache Valley settlers

There were several incidents in the summer and fall of 1862 that
led to the eventual confrontation between Bear Hunter and Col.
Connor. While viewed as isolated incidents they seem insignificant,
when grouped together a picture of broad struggles over almost the
entire United States west of the Mississippi River can be seen during this
time period when the attention of the nation was focused on the
battles going on in the eastern states. Modern historians have
often overlooked these incidents because they occurred near the
ill-defined boundary of two different territorial jurisdictions
(Washington Territory and
Utah Territory), where the incidents
are geographically close but the administrative centers dealing
with them are over 1000 miles apart. Indeed, the vicinity
of Franklin and the general location of the conflict was
assumed to be in the Utah Territory, with residents of Franklin
sending elected representatives to the Utah Territorial Legislature
and participating in the politics of Cache County, Utah until 1872 when a surveying team pointed out that
they were, in fact, in Idaho.

Pugweenee

A resident
of Summit Creek (now Smithfield) found his horse missing and accused a young Indian
who was fishing in Summit Creek
of having stolen the animal. Robert Thornley, an English
immigrant and first resident of Summit Creek defended the young
Indian by pointing out that he still had live fish strung on a
willow immersed in the creek, so he would have had no time to steal
a horse, hide it away, and return to his fishing. But a jury of
locals hanged the young Indian anyway. The name of the young man
has come down in local history as Pugweenee. Later information
reveals that Pugweenee is the Shoshone word for "fish," so
it is probable that the young man was merely saying "look at my
fish," or "I was just fishing."

It turned out that the young Indian was the son of the local
Shoshone Chief and within a few days the
Indians retaliated by killing a couple of young men of the Merrill
family who were gathering wood in the nearby canyon.

Massacre near Fort Hall

During
the summer of 1859, a settler company of about 19 people from
Michigan were traveling on the Oregon Trail near Fort Hall when a group of people who were presumed to be
Shoshone attacked the settler company.Gunfire rang out at
night and killed several members of the company, where the
survivors took refuge along the Portneuf River and hid among the bullrushes
and willow trees.

Three
days later, a company of dragoons lead by
Lieutenant Livingston of Fort Walla Walla met up with these survivors, who performed the
formal investigation of the incident, including a documentation of
the brutality of the attack.

Reuben Van Ornum and the Battle of Providence

On September 9, 1860, Elijah Otter led a group of migrants on the
Oregon trail when they were attacked by a group of presumably
Bannock and Boise Shoshone. In spite of attempts to placate these
Native Americans, an attack ensued and nearly the entire migrant
party was killed and their livestock driven off. Alexis Van Ornum,
his family, and about ten others made an escape to avoid death by
leaving all of their possessions and hide in some nearby brush,
only to be massacred. They were later discovered by a company of
U.S. Soldiers led by Captain F.T. Dent. One of the officers of this
company, Lieutenant Marcus A. Reno, came across the mutilated
bodies of six of the Van Ornums, where four of their children were
apparently taken captive by the attacking warriors.

As a
direct result of this incident, a military fort was established
near the present location of Boise, Idaho, where Colonel George Wright requested $150,000
from the Federal Government to establish a military post able to
sustain five companies of troops.

Zachias Van Ornum, the brother of Alexis, heard a story from a
relative who had just been on the Oregon Trail that a small white
boy of about the same age as his nephew was being held by a group
of Northwestern Shoshone and likely to be in Cache Valley. Assuming
this to be his nephew Reuben Van Ornum, he gathered a small group
of friends and traveled to Salt Lake City in order to get some help
from the territorial government. Upon arrival in Salt Lake City, he
visited Col. Connor at Fort Douglas requesting assistance at trying
to retrieve his nephew. Col. Connor agreed to help out, and sent a
detachment of cavalry under the command of
Major Edward McGarry to Cache Valley to rendezvous with Van Ornum
near the town of Providence, Utah.

Van Ornum located a small group of Shoshoni warriors being led by
Chief Bear Hunter and soon joined with
McGarry in following the Shoshone as they retreated to nearby
Providence Canyon. McGarry
gave the order "to kill every Indian they could see." A skirmish
between the Shoshone and the U.S. Army lasted for about two hours
after the Shoshone established a defensible position in the canyon.
Afterward, Chief Bear Hunter then attempted to signal surrender by
climbing a foothill and waving a flag of truce.

Chief Bear Hunter, together with approximately 20 of his people,
were taken prisoner into the soldier's camp near Providence. When
asked about the whereabouts of the young white boy, Bear Hunter
said that the boy had been sent away a few days earlier. McGarry
then instructed Bear Hunter to send some of his people and to
return with the white boy, holding Bear Hunter hostage together
with four warriors. By noon of the next day, the Shoshone returned
with a small boy who fit the description of being Reuben Van Ornum.
Zachias took custody of the boy and announced that it was his
long-lost nephew, taking the boy back to his home in Oregon.

The Shoshone protested this action, claiming that this boy was
instead the son of a French fur trapper and the sister of another
Shoshone chief, Washakie. The federal
troops left with Van Ornum and the young boy, claiming victory and
reporting to Col. Connor that he had rescued the boy "without the
lost or scratch of man or horse." Bear Hunter then complained to
the settlers in Cache Valley, arguing that they should have been
more forthcoming in helping him against the soldiers. After a
confrontation between Bear Hunter, some warriors from his band, and
nearly 70 members of the Cache Valley militia, the settlers donated
two cows and some flour as the "best and cheapest policy" to
resolve the situation

Bear River crossing

On December 4, 1862, Connor sent McGarry on another expedition to
Cache Valley, this time to recover some stolen stock from an
encampment of Shoshone. In spite of attempted secrecy, the Shoshone
were able to break camp and flee before the Army arrived, cutting
the ropes of a ferry at the crossing. McGarry was able to get his
men across, but without his horses. Four apparently unaware
Shoshoni warriors were captured and held for ransom, where McGarry
ordered that if the stock was not delivered by noon the next day,
these men were to be shot. The Shoshone chiefs responded by moving
further north into Cache Valley, and the captives were executed by
a firing squad, their bodies dumped into the Bear River. In an
editorial, the Deseret News
expressed concern that the execution would make the Shoshone most
hostile and vindictive.

Incident on the Montana Trail

A.H. Conover, an operator of a freight hauling service between the
mining camps of Montana and Salt Lake City, was attacked by a group
of Shoshone warriors that killed two other men that were
accompanying him on the journey: George Clayton and Henry Bean.
When he arrived in Salt Lake City following the incident, he told a
reporter for the Deseret News that the Shoshone were
"determined to avenge the blood of their comrades" killed by Major
McGarry and his soldiers, and that the Shoshone intended to "kill
every white man they should meet on the north side of the Bear
River, till they should be fully avenged."

Attack on the Montana Trail

The final incident that ultimately triggered Connor's expedition
into Cache Valley involved a group of eight miners also on the
Montana trail, which unfortunately came within just two miles of
the main Shoshone winter encampment north of Franklin.

As the miners traveled down the general path of the Montana Trail,
they missed a turn in the road and instead ended up mired and lost
on the western side of the Bear River, unable to cross the river
because it was too deep. Three men from the party swam across the
river to Richmond and attempted to obtain some provisions and a guide
from the settlers.Before they could return, the rest of the
group was attacked by Shoshone, killing John Henry Smith of
Walla
Walla, as well as some horses. Residents of
Richmond soon returned with the advance party, and recovered the
body of John Smith, where he was eventually buried in the Richmond
city cemetery.

The miners eventually made their way to Salt Lake City. William
Bevins, one of the miners, came before Chief Justice John F. Kinney and swore an affidavit
describing the murder of John Smith. Bevins also reported that ten
men from the mines, en route to the city, had been murdered three
days before the murder of Smith. Kinney then issued a warrant for the arrest of Chiefs Bear Hunter,
Sanpitch, and Sagwitch and ordered the territorial marshal to
seek assistance from Col. Connor for a military force to "effect
the arrest of the guilty Indians."

While the legal documents certainly were a motivating factor for
Connor, he later described that the legal basis was not strictly
necessary for him to mount an expedition against the Shoshone. As
explained by Connor in an official report to the U.S. War
Department prior to the engagement:

"I have the honor to report to you that from information
received from various sources of the encampment of a large body of
Indians on the Bear River, 140 miles north of this point, who had
murdered several miners, during the winter, passing to and from the
settlements in this valley to the Bear River mines east of the
Rocky Mountains. And being satisfied that they were part of the
same band who had been murdering emigrants on the Overland Mail
Route for the last 15 years, and the principal actors and leaders
in the horrid massacre of the past summer. I determined, although
the season was unfavorable to military expedition in consequence of
cold weather and deep snow, to chastise them if possible."

Military action in Cache Valley

In many ways, the soldiers stationed at Fort Douglas were spoiling
for a fight. In addition to discipline problems among the soldiers,
there was a minor "mutiny" among the soldiers where a joint
petition by most of the California Volunteers made a request to
withhold over $30,000 from their paychecks for the sole purpose of
instead paying for naval passage to the eastern states, and to
"serve their country in shooting traitors instead of eating rations
and freezing to death around sage brush fires..." Furthermore, they
stated that they would gladly pay this money "for the
privilege (original emphasis) of going to the Potomac and
getting shot." This request was declined by the War
Department.

Throughout most of January 1863, soldiers at Fort Douglas were
preparing for a lengthy expedition traveling north to the Shoshone.
Connor also wanted to keep word of his expedition secret, in order
to make a surprise attack upon the Shoshone when he arrived. To do
this, he separated his command into two different detachments, that
were to periodically come together on their journey to Cache
Valley. His main concern was to avoid the problems that McGarry had
faced in the earlier action, where the Shoshone had moved and
scattered even before his troops could arrive.

Reaction to this military campaign was mixed. George A. Smith, in
the official Journal History of the LDS Church,
wrote:

"It is said that Col. Connor is determined to exterminate the
Indians who have been killing the Emigrants on the route to the
Gold Mines in Washington Territory. Small detachments have been
leaving for the North for several days. If the present expedition
copies the doings of the other that preceded it, it will result in
catching some friendly Indians, murdering them, and letting the
guilty scamps remain undisturbed in their mountain haunts."

On the other hand, the Deseret News in an editorial
expressed:

"...with ordinary good luck, the volunteers will 'wipe them
out.' We wish this community rid of all such parties, and if Col.
Connor be successful in reaching that bastard class of humans who
play with the lives of the peaceable and law abiding citizens in
this way, we shall be pleased to acknowledge our obligations."

The first group to leave from Fort Douglas was forty men of Company
K, 3rd
Regiment California Volunteer Infantry, commanded by Captain
Samuel W. Hoyt, accompanied by 15 baggage wagons and two "mountain
howitzers" totalling 80 soldiers They left on January 22,
1863.

The second group was 220 cavalry, led personally by Connor himself
with his aides and fifty men each from Companies A, H, K and M of
the 2nd
Regiment of Cavalry, California Volunteers which left on
January 25. As orders specific for this campaign, Connor ordered
each soldier to carry "40 rounds of rifle ammunition and 30 rounds
of pistol ammunition". This was a total of nearly 16,000 rounds for
the campaign. In addition, nearly 200 rounds of artillery shot were
brought with the howitzers. As a part of the deception, the cavalry
were to travel at night while the infantry moved during the day.
Accompanying Connor was the former U.S. Marshall and Mormon scout,
Orrin Porter Rockwell.

On the evening of January 28, Captain Hoyt's infantry finally
arrived near the town of Franklin, where they spotted three
Shoshone who were attempting to get food supplies from the settlers
in the town. The Shoshone received nine bushels of wheat in three
sacks. William Hull, the settler who was assisting the Shoshone,
noted later:

"we had two of the three horses loaded, having put three
bushels on each horse...when I looked up and saw the Soldiers
approaching from the south. I said to the Indian boys, 'Here comes
the Toquashes (Shoshoni for U.S. Soldiers) maybe, you will
all be killed. They answered 'maybe Toquashes be killed too,' but
not waiting for the third horse to be loaded, they quickly jumped
upon their horses and led the three horses away, disappearing in
the distance."

The sacks of grain carried by these Shoshoni were later found by
the 3rd California Volunteers during their advance the next day,
apparently dropped by the Shoshone in their attempt to get back to
their camp.

Col. Connor met up with Hoyt that evening as well, with orders to
begin moving at about 1:00 A.M. the next morning for a surprise
attack, but an attempt to try and get a local settler to act as a
scout for the immediate area led the actual advance to wait until
3:00 A.M.

It should be noted that this military action took place during
perhaps the coldest time of the year in Cache Valley. Local
settlers commented that it was unseasonably cold even for northern
Utah, and it may have been as cold as -20°F (-30°C) on the morning
of the 29th when the attack began. Several soldiers had come down
with frostbite and other cold-weather problems, so that the 3rd
volunteers were only at about 2/3rds of their strength compared to
when they left Fort Douglas. Among the rations issued to the
soldiers during the campaign was a ration of whiskey held in a canteen, where several soldiers noted that
this whiskey froze solid on the night before the attack.

Shoshone battle preparations

It is apparent that the Shoshoni chiefs were far from ignorant of
the potential for conflict with Col. Connor's soldiers, and some
minor preparations were made at the same time. Most of this
involved mainly gathering foodstuffs from surrounding Mormon
settlements, in a fashion very similar to the incident listed above
with the residents of Richmond, Utah.

Most of the firearms that the Shoshone had at the time of the
attack had been captured in various small skirmishes, traded from
fur trappers, white settlers, and other Native American tribal
groups, or simply antiques that had been handed down from one
generation to another over the years. Clearly they were not as
standardized or as well built as the guns issued by the Union Army
to the soldiers of the California Volunteers.

Bear Hunter and the other Shoshoni chiefs did, however, make some
defensive arrangements around their encampment, in addition to
simply selecting a generally defensible position in the first
place. Willow branches had been woven into makeshift screens,
hiding the position and numbers of Shoshone. They also dug a series
of "rifle pits" along the eastern bank of Beaver Creek as well as
along the Bear River.

Perhaps most ironic was that at the same time the arrest warrant
was being issued by Justice Kinney, Chief Sanpitch (named in the
warrant) was in Salt Lake City trying to negotiate peace on behalf
of the Northwestern Shoshone. A correspondent for the Sacramento Union reported "The Prophet
(Brigham Young) had told Sanpitch the Mormon people had suffered
enough from the Shoshoni of Cache Valley and that if more blood
were spilled the Mormons might just "pitch in" and help the
troops."

While it appears as though the deception by Connor to hide the
numbers of his soldiers involved in the confrontation was
successful, the Shoshone were not even then anticipating a direct
military engagement with these soldiers. Instead, they were
preparing for a negotiated settlement where the chiefs would be
able to talk with officers of the U.S. Army and try to come to an
understanding.

Battle of Bear River

The physical location where the
conflict took place.

Major McGarry and the first cavalry units of the 2nd Regiment
California Volunteer Cavalry arrived at the battle scene at
6:00 a.m., just as dawn was breaking over the mountains. Due to the
weather conditions and deep snow, it took some time for Connor to
organize his soldiers into a battle line. The artillery pieces
never did make it to the battle as they got caught in a snow drift
six miles from the Shoshone encampment.

Chief Sagwitch noted the approach of the American soldiers when he
said, according to his grandson Moroni Timbimboo, "Look like there
is something up on the ridge up there. Look like a cloud. Maybe it
is a steam come from a horse. Maybe that's them soldiers they were
talking about" Soon afterward, the first shots of this incident
occurred.

Initially Connor tried a direct frontal
offensive against the Shoshoni positions, but was soon
overwhelmed with return gunfire from the Shoshone. It was during
this initial assault that most of the direct combat related
casualties occurred to the California Volunteers.

After temporarily retreating and regrouping, Connor sent McGarry
and several other smaller groups into flanking maneuvers attacking the village from the
sides and from behind, with a line of infantry that stood to block
any attempt by the Shoshone to flee from the battle.

After about two hours, the Shoshone had run out of ammunition.
According to some later reports, some Shoshone were seen attempting
to cast lead ammunition during the middle of the battle, and had
died with the molds still in their hands. When the ammunition ran
out for the Shoshoni warriors, the battle quickly turned into a
massacre.

Massacre and actions of U.S. soldiers

As the Shoshone were reaching desperate measures to fight off the
U.S. Army, including the use of tomahawks and archery, the soldiers
seemed to lose all sense of control and discipline. After most of
the men were killed, soldiers proceeded to rape and molest the
women of the encampment, and many of the children were also shot
and killed. In some cases, soldiers held the feet of infants by the
heel and "beat their brains out on any hard substance they could
find." Those women who refused to submit to the soldiers were shot
and killed. One local resident, Alexander Stalker, noted that at
this time many soldiers pulled out their pistols and shot several
Shoshoni people at point blank range. The soldiers also
deliberately burned almost everything they could get their hands
on, especially the dwelling structures that the Shoshone had been
sleeping in, and killing anybody they found to be still
inside.

Casualties and immediate aftermath

While the death toll among the Shoshoni people was very large,
there were some survivors of the experience. Most notable was Chief
Sagwitch, who was able to help gather the remaining survivors and
attempt to keep his community alive. Sagwitch himself was shot
twice in the hand and attempted to flee on horseback only to have
the horse shot out from under him. Eventually he ran down the
ravine and tumbled into the Bear River near a hot spring, floating in some brush until
nightfall.

Sagwitch's son, Beshup Timbimboo, was shot at least seven times but
somehow survived and lived long enough to be rescued by family
members. Other members of the band somehow hid in the willow brush
of the Bear River, or tried to act as if they were dead. After the
battle was considered over by the Army officers, the soldiers
returned to their temporary encampment near Franklin. This gave
Sagwitch and the rest of the Shoshone the opportunity to retrieve
the wounded and build a fire for those that were still alive.

The residents of Franklin opened their homes to the wounded
soldiers that night, and brought in blankets and hay into the
church meetinghouse for the rest of the soldiers to avoid exposure
to the cold. Connor also hired several residents of Franklin to
hitch up sleighs and help bring the wounded back to Salt Lake
City.

The California Volunteers suffered 14 soldiers killed and 49
wounded, 7 mortally. Connors estimated more than 224 braves were
killed from a force of 300 warriors. He reported 175 horses and
some arms captured, and that 70 lodges and a large quantity of
wheat were destroyed. A small quantity of wheat was left for the
160 captured squaws and children that he left on the field.

There is a large discrepancy between the number of Indians reported
killed by Conners and the number counted by the citizens of
Franklin, the latter being much larger. Also, the settlers claim
the number of squaws and children survivors to be much smaller than
that stated by Conners. In his 1911 autobiography, Danish emigrant
Hans Jasperson claims to have walked among the bodies, counting 493
dead Shoshones.[55086]

In 1918, Sagwitch's son Be-shup, Frank Timbimboo Warner, stated
that "half of those present got away" and that 156 were killed. He
went on to say that two brothers and a sister-in-law "lived", as
well as many who later lived at the Washakie, Utah settlement, the
Fort Hall reservation, in the Wind River country, and
elsewhere.

Many Indians became accustomed to leaving their younger children
with white settlers to overwinter, some of these effectively
becoming members of some Mormon families, appearing in early Cache
Valley photographs together with other family members.

Effects on settlement of Cache Valley and long term
consequences

This conflict marked essentially the final significant influence of
the Shoshone nation upon Cache Valley and its immediate
surroundings. In addition to opening up the northern part of Cache
Valley to Mormon settlement, Cache Valley also offered up a staging
area for additional settlements in southeastern Idaho. Friction
between the Mormons and Col. Connor continued for many more years
with accusations of harassment of non-Mormons in the Utah Territory
and criticisms by Mormons of Connor's attempts to begin a mining
industry in Utah.

Chief Sagwitch and many members of his band made a much more formal
alliance with the Mormons, with many of them being baptized and
joining the LDS Church.
Sagwitch himself was ordained to the office of an Elder in the
Melchizedek priesthood.
Eventually members of this band helped to
establish the town of Washakie, Utah, named in honor of the Shoshone chieftain.
Most of the remaining members of the Northwestern band of Shoshone
built farms and homesteads under LDS Church sponsorship, and their
descendants became largely integrated into the mainstream LDS
society. The remaining Shoshone that did not get involved with this
settlement instead went to the Fort Hall Indian
Reservation.

As for Col. Connor and the California Volunteers, they were treated
as heroes upon arrival at Fort Douglas as well as by members of
their community in California, according to published newspaper
articles. As a direct result of this military campaign, Connor was
promoted to the permanent rank of Brigadier General and given a brevet promotion shortly afterward to the
rank of Major General. Connor was to
continue his campaigns against Native American peoples throughout
the remainder of the U.S. Civil War, with a significant campaign of
note called the Powder River
Expedition against the Sioux and Cheyenne.

See also

References

Franklin County Historical Society (Idaho); "The passing of the
redman, being a succinct account of the last battle that wrested
Idaho from the bondage of the Indians"; [Preston? Id.] Franklin
County Historical Society and Monument Committee.
[1917].http://www.archive.org/details/passingofredmanb00franrich